


There But For Fortune

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M, Non-romantic to romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 01:51:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16822723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: The path to relationship, through Mycroft's eyes, and in Mycroft's memories.This is one where I wanted to play (as I often do) with the realities of two rather gritty professional men old enough to "know better" in a reasonably realistic way. It hovers between riotous sentiment and realistic grit. You know me: sentiment wins the day.Enjoy, mes enfants.





	There But For Fortune

Later, Mycroft would think they almost didn’t manage it.

He blamed himself—though, later still, talking it through with Greg, he accepted that both had brought their own baggage with them. Mycroft’s reserve was no greater than Greg’s scarred spirit, or his sense that he must keep to his place.

They might have kept on shagging, Mycroft, thought. But it was a blessing, a grace, pure luck that allowed them to find their way to something better. To making love. Only in making love did they each realize their lives begged for that tenderness like grief begs for the comfort of tears.

The first time they were together, they fucked—down and dirty, plain and simple, no varnish on it. Not a planned thing. Not even a desired thing, really. After it happened both men spent the next few weeks dodging each other and communicating in terse, ginger emails and texts. That first time had been a blind tumble triggered by a word, a phrase, a too-suggestive revelation. Their subconscious instincts had combined to defeat them, trapping them in a deepening spiral of opportunity and reckless desire. Reviewing it later Mycroft had been dismayed by how trite, predictable and faintly tawdry it had all seemed: two aging men exchanging first accidental innuendoes, then outright glances and flirtation, then pawing each other in a dark corridor, tumbling to an office sofa, failing at all sensible precautions that might plausibly be considered “safe sex.” They had been clumsy. Their timing had been abysmal. They’d given each other bruises and aches that lasted for days afterward rising from incompetence and adrenaline-fueled blunders, not erotic violence. Mycroft, satiated by the anal sex they began with, had almost reluctantly offered a blow-job in return, out of a duty-filled sense of fair play, rather than desire. He had done that duty poorly enough to leave him desperate for his companion to climax-please-god-climax…and had left his jaw sore for days to come.

When finished, they had bounced away from each other as though they were matching poles of two magnets, repelling each other. The aftermath had been uneasy, polite, and as brief as either man could make it.

Mycroft went home to his empty apartment that night, closed the door, and the tremble had begun. Horrible, horrible, horrible, he had thought, holding himself, long arms wrapped around himself, fingers clutching his own shoulder-points. What had they done—two stupid old men after so many years of comfortable, enjoyable professional work together? What had they done? He threw up in the bathroom, smelling faint traces of his partner’s come over the bile and the ham and cheese sandwich that had been all he’d had for dinner that evening.

He and Lestrade had not been able to meet each other’s eyes the next time they met. The time after, though, they had gained enough confidence that they could put the matter in the past to allow both of them to treat it as a thing-unspoken, ignored between them. They returned to their previous ways—meetings a few times a month, regular guarded communiques, exchanges of information met by carefully considered directives.

They guarded London and the nation from terrorism, and a range of other things that came up along the way. Spying does not always reveal what you set out to discover, but it always reveals something.

At first Mycroft thought with profound relief that nothing had changed between them. They had been lucky beyond all reason, and been able to survive that crass little exchange without any lasting damage done. Then, over time, he concluded that it might even have helped. Something long unstated between them had been expressed, and it could no longer taunt them, forever denied but forever begging to be brought to attention. They knew, now—they desired each other, they could service each other if necessary, but they were better off not. Good to know, yes? A curiosity satisfied. A truth that could, slowly, age and mellow between them.

What grew in that space, that hidden truth they shared, was unexpected. It was quietly radiant—casting the light of the moon, though, not the sun, or the bright, sharp light of a star. It shone soft and silver and bright, illuminating a night world that existed all around them, and set off unexpected aftershocks.

A late-night meeting, Mycroft remembered. Two men rendezvousing in a cheap canteen. They sat beside each other at the counter, making almost meaningless comments while calmly passing data back and forth between their smart phones. Lestrade drank coffee and munched his way through a bacon butty. Mycroft had a cup of hot tea and a bagel with cream cheese.

Lestrade, unexpectedly, chuckled and jogged Mycroft’s arm with his elbow, nodding as he did so.

A couple of young men ambled down the street beyond, gingerly apart and yet achingly, obviously together, the uneasy togetherness of two gay men not sure of their safety if they held hands, yet too in love not to lean toward each other, bump against each other, gaze into each other’s eyes to the detriment of their navigation down the pavement.

“Young love,” he murmured to Mycroft, amused. “There but for fortune, eh?”

“Fortune and twenty-some years added maturity.”

“Still.”

They said nothing more, that night. But the two young men lingered in Mycroft’s mind after, never really gone, forever walking together in the sweet first days of their affair. Greg forever watched them, smiling tenderly, eyes warm and kind, in love with their love.

Mycroft forever watched Greg, just a bit in love with Greg’s love.

How odd. How very odd. To love the man just that little bit because he was able to see those two sweet, foolish boys in his and Mycroft's own catastrophic, groping night together. How—tender. It had a smoky, musky melancholy sweetness that seduced him in moments of leisure, begging for a nice glass of port or a decent sherry, rather than brandy or his usual single-malt.

He thought it was that sweetness that carried the day, when Lestrade was injured capturing a murderer with his team. Not a major injury—a major injury might have made Mycroft wary. But a minor break in his non-dominant arm? Not even a big break demanding a full cast, but the sort that gets a Velcro splint and a good but not impressive prescription of pain killer. It was the very triviality of it that lured Mycroft to buy a humorous card, and arrive at hospital as Lestrade was released. He’d smiled and said, “Allow me to take you to dinner. You shouldn’t have to cook your first night strapped into that device.”

They had gone to a good chop house, nicer than Lestrade might normally afford, but not so nice as to make him feel uncomfortable. They’d talked of nothing much at all: the capture of the criminal, the days of mutually minding Sherlock, the dangers of their professions, the certainty that as they rose in age they were less often placed at risk. Then they talked about movies, and books, and music. Then, suddenly, they didn’t talk, just looked at each other.

“You’re a good friend,” Lestrade had said, gruffly. Then smiled an uneasy smile. “Good friend,” he’d said again, and ducked his head to look into his coffee cup.

“As are you,” Mycroft replied, reflexively, words running on automatic as his heart, stumbling, noticed the gleam of salt-and-pepper stubble on Lestrade’s chin, and thought of how it would feel rasping along his neck…

He’d gasped a little, then stilled his breath, but not soon enough. Brown eyes glanced up from the coffee cup, and met his, and that moment had happened that will happen, over and over, to people in all places and all times. That moment of shared desire recognized but not yet acted on.

Something about the walk to Lestrade’s flat reminded Mycroft of Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks,” though they were outside, and together in a way the people in “Nighthawks” were not, the sense of being on display in a night-time fish tank, and the loneliness, and the warmth of their own one island of comfort all seemed to match the painting.

They didn’t hold hands…but, Mycroft realized, they gravitated toward each other, drawn in, bumping shoulders.

“There but for fortune,” he muttered.

“What?”

“Remembering. That couple. That time in the canteen.” He met Greg’s eyes. “The two young lovers.”

Greg’s eyes glowed with the memory. “Yeah. There but for fortune…”

The panto at the flat door, silent, was alive with possibility. Greg fumbled for his keys—precariously tucked into his left-hand trouser pocket. Mycroft, struggling to restrain a panicked giggle, had retrieved them for him, his hand set alight by the warm of the other man’s flesh below the pocket fabric, the curve of his back against Mycroft’s front. Mycroft opened the door. Greg stepped in, faltered, then stepped aside, gesturing Mycroft in.

“We shouldn’t,” Mycroft said, softly.

Greg didn’t move.

“Your arm?” Mycroft said, offering the excuse.

“Just a hairline,” Greg said. “Not going to slow me down.”

Mycroft’s subconscious pushed him forward, even as his higher self argued he ought not. He stepped warily into the dark room, closing the door behind him.

Neither man moved for the longest time—a time so long it became impossible to ignore the hidden desires prolonging the moment, trapping them in their own hesitation. Then…

“C’mere,” Lestrade husked, and stepped forward, good arm going around Mycroft’s waist. He tipped his head up and nuzzled along Mycroft’s jaw, and Mycroft heard the soft grit of his own stubble, stroked to sandpaper whispers by Greg’s dry lips.

He moaned, and slipped his own arms around Lestrade.

They didn’t speak, then—not for the longest time. They drifted to a battered arm chair, where Mycroft’ straddled Lestrade’s thighs and they kissed and touched, their entire world narrowed down to shadows and shattered breath and the slow, slow progress of hands from shoulders to arms to fingers flashing to unbutton shirts, to the final revelation of burning-hot skin. They asked permissions with hesitations, with cautious advances and retreats, each waiting to be sure the other desired this intimacy and then that. Mycroft slid down between Lestrade’s thighs, offering this time what had been an unwilling duty before, and unlike before finding Lestrade’s desire erotic enough to carry the action through. The now-familiar scent of semen and sweat and skin was good, this time. The climax was reached soon enough that Mycroft didn’t fear for his jaw this time. Instead, he nuzzled fondly at Greg’s spent prick, soft and velvety and damp with spit and come, kissing along the tender wrap of his foreskin. He’d let his cheek lie on the soft, silken skin of his partner’s inner thigh.

Greg’s fingers had stroked gently through his hair, stroking the bald as tenderly as the remaining scruff. “So fine,” he’d whispered. “Can’t believe it. So fine…”

Something in Mycroft’s heart had bloomed, then, in the intimacy and the darkness, with the comfort and the praise. He reached up and grabbed Greg’s hand, pulling it to his mouth and kissing the palm.

He hardly noticed when Greg slid down out of the chair and joined him on the carpet. He noticed more when he was taken in warm arms, and kissed, and made love to.

Made love to. He had not experienced anything quite like it, before. It was so open. It was so vulnerable. They were like the two boys, he thought, so fragile and shaken by each other’s love. He’d moved beneath Greg’s hands, sighing and murmuring, responding to touch and to tenderness.

“Seems John Thomas is interested in seconds,” Greg murmured, partway through. “For a miracle. Don’t know it will last, mind you,” he added, too cautious to indulge optimism. “Want to try?”

Mycroft, sliding his hand between Greg’s thighs and feeling the comforting weight and plumpness of his cock, murmured his own desire.

“Bedroom, then,” Greg said. “Got lubricant.”

They’d finished undressing by Greg’s unmade bed. Mycroft had felt shy, even in the limited light cast from the street outside. His stomach had fluttered as Greg pushed him gently to the mattress, and his cock had stood high. Greg, bedroom-eyed, had slid onto the bed beside Mycroft, and touched his cock kindly, smiling. “Brave soldier,” he said. “Stands at attention, he does.”

Mycroft could only make a noise between a murmur and a moan, as much from the idea of what was to come as from the words or the fingers firmly wrapping his erection.

Greg explored, fingers finding the silken trough between torso and thigh, the fuzz-covered mound of Mycroft’s pubis bone, the deep crevasse between his bum cheeks, the tight clutch of muscle that marked his entrance. He slicked Mycrofts arse and prepared him, all the while softly suckling on his cock.

Penetration was slow, careful, and to Mycroft it was heartbreaking—so tender, so loving he had nothing to compare it to. Nothing at all. He groped for any concrete experience to anchor his feelings, and found none. He was naked beneath his lover, vulnerable as he had never been before, satisfied as he had never been before, cared for as he had never been before. His moans were punctuated by soft near-sobs, and tears ran from the corners of his eyes, and he wrapped one arm and his thighs around Greg and held tight, so tight, pulling the man into him, arching his hips into each thrust, stroking himself softly, softly, so softly with his free hand, afraid to lose one second of this to an early climax. When he did come, it seemed to rise out of some trench in his spirit deeper than the Marianas and lonelier than the grave. As he shouted, his climax triggered Greg, who spent himself deep in Mycroft, then fell, exhausted, across Mycroft’s chest.

They didn’t even clean up that night, too shattered by it all. Mycroft tipped his lover off, until they lay facing each other. Then he drew Greg close, nosing his hair, kissing his temple, cherishing the curve of his waist—just a touch soft, but infinitely beloved. Greg clung tight, sighing back his own contentment. They fell asleep that way. When they woke, they showered in gentle, loving kindness, together, in love.

Later, Mycroft would see men on the streets of London, walking alone. Couples who were no longer in love, jostling along in cold companionship. Youngsters drunk and flirting frantically, looking for what he and Greg had in bounteous plenty.

There but for fortune, he would think. They could so easily have failed to connect. Passed each other by, avoided the possibility, two stern professionals too old to make feverish mistakes out of mere desire. Instead, they were lovers, and more than lovers. They were fragile, and blessed with each other’s careful, mindful grace. Over the years they walked London together, and sometimes caught the eyes of people watching, amused, bemused, scandalized, charmed, but always aware of that special bond between them.  
  
“There but for fortune,” they would say, and wish such good fortune on those who watched.


End file.
